Читать книгу The Helpers - Lynde Francis - Страница 5

The dancing party at the Calmaines' was a crush, as Mrs. Calmaine's social enlargements were wont to be. For an hour or more the avenue had been a-rumble with carriages coming and going, and a trickling stream of bidden ones flowed steadily inward under the electric-lighted awning, which extended the welcome of the hospitable house to the very curb.

Thanks to Myra Van Vetter, whose tiring was always of the most leisurely, the Elliotts were fashionably late; and the elderly man, with the hesitant air accentuated by the unwonted dress-coat, had much ado to win through the throng in the drawing-rooms with his charges. His greeting to the hostess was sincere rather than well-turned in its phrasing; but Mrs. Calmaine was sweetly gracious.

"So glad to see you, Stephen," she protested; "the old friends can never be spared, you know." She shook hands with unaffected cordiality, and her tactful use of the elderly man's Christian name went far toward effacing the afflictive dress-coat. "Miss Van Vetter, you are quite radiant to-night. You spoil all one's ideals of Quaker demureness."

"Oh, Myra's demure enough, only you have to be her country cousin to find it out," put in Connie maliciously; and when her father and Miss Van Vetter had made room for later comers, she waited for another word with the hostess.

"Just a hint, before I'm submerged," she began, when her opportunity came. "I'm unattached, and particularly good-natured and docile to-night. Make use of me just as you would of Delia or Bessie. You've everybody here, as usual, and if I can help you amuse people" —

"Thank you, Connie, dear; that is very sweet of you. There are people here to-night who seem not to belong to any one. Here comes one of them now."

Constance looked and saw a young man making his way toward them; a soldierly figure, with square shoulders and the easy bearing of one who has lived much in the open; but with a face which was rather thoughtful than strong, though its lines were well masked under a close-trimmed beard and virile mustaches. She recognized her unintroduced acquaintance of the theatre; and a minute or two afterward, when Mrs. Calmaine would have presented the new-comer, Miss Elliott had disappeared.

"Let's sit down here, Teddy; this is as good a place as any. You poor boy! it bores you dreadfully, doesn't it? How trying it must be to be blasé at – shall I say twenty? or is it twenty-one?"

The dancing was two hours old, and Connie and the smooth-faced boy who stood for the hopes of the house of Calmaine were sitting out the intermission on a broad step of the main stair.

"Oh, I'm young, but I'll outgrow that," rejoined the youth tolerantly. "All the same, you needn't bully me because you've a month or two the advantage. Shall I go and get you something to eat, or drink?"

"No, thank you, Teddy; I'm neither hungry nor thirsty. But you might give me the recipe for being good-natured when people make game of you."

"Yes; I think I see myself giving you points on that," said the boy, with frank admiration in his eyes. "I'm not running an angel-school just at present."

Connie's blush was reproachful. "You ridiculous boy!" she retorted. "You'll be making love to me next, just the same as if we hadn't known each other all our lives. Do you talk that way to other girls? or are you only practicing on me so that you can?"

Teddy Calmaine shook his head. "There isn't anybody else," he asserted, with mock earnestness. "My celestial acquaintance is too limited. When the goddess goes, there are no half-goddesses to take her place."

Connie sniffed sympathetically, and then laughed at him. "You ought to have seen me yesterday, when poppa brought old Jack Hawley home with him. Poppa and Jack were partners in the 'Vesta,' and Mr. Hawley hadn't seen me since I was in pinafores. He called me 'little girl,' and wanted to know if I went to school, and how I was getting along!"

Young Calmaine made a dumb show of applause. "O umbræ Pygmæorum! Why wasn't I there to see! But you mustn't be too hard on old Jack. Half the people here who don't know you think you're an escaped schoolgirl; I've heard 'em. That's why I took pity on you and" —

"Teddy Calmaine, go away and find me somebody to talk to; a grown man, if you please. You make me tired."

The boy got up with a quizzical grin on his smooth face. "I'll do it," he assented affably; "I'm no end good-natured, as you remarked a few minutes ago."

When he was gone Connie forgot him, and fell into a muse, with the sights and sounds of the crush for its motive. From her perch on the stair she could look down on the shifting scene in the wide entrance hall, and through the archway beyond she had a glimpse of the circling figures in the ball-room swaying rhythmically to the music. It was all very delightful and joyous, and she enjoyed it with a zest which was yet undulled by satiety. None the less, the lavishness of it oppressed her, and a vague protest, born of other sights and scenes sharply contrasted but no less familiar to the daughter of Stephen Elliott, began to shape itself in her heart. How much suffering a bare tithe of the wealth blazing here in jewels on fair hands and arms and necks would alleviate. And how many hungry mouths might be filled from the groaning tables in the supper-room.

Miss Elliott came out of her reverie reluctantly at the bidding of her late companion. Teddy Calmaine had obeyed her literally; and when she turned he was presenting the soldierly young man with the pointed beard and curling mustaches.

"Miss Elliott, this is Mr. Jeffard. You said you wanted a" —

"An ice, Teddy," she cut in, with a look which was meant to be obliterative. "But you needn't mind it now. Will you have half a stair-step, Mr. Jeffard?"

She made room for him, but he was mindful of his obligations.

"Not if you will give me this waltz."

She glanced at her card and looked up at him with a smile which was half pleading and half quizzical. "Must I?"

He laughed and sat down beside her. "There is no 'must' about it. I was hoping you would refuse."

"Oh, thank you."

"For your sake rather than my own," he hastened to add. "I am a wretched dancer."

"What a damaging admission!"

"Is it? Do you know, I had hoped you wouldn't take that view of it."

"I don't," she admitted, quite frankly. "We take it seriously, as we do most of our amusements, but it's a relic of barbarism. Once, when I was a very little girl, my father took me to see a Ute scalp-dance, – without the scalps, of course, – and – well, first impressions are apt to be lasting. I never see a ball-room in action without thinking of Fire-in-the-Snow and his capering braves."

Jeffard smiled at the conceit, but he spoke to the truism.

"I hope your first impressions of me won't be lasting," he ventured. "I think I was more than usually churlish last night."

She glanced up quickly. "There should be no 'last night' for us," she averred.

"Forgive me; you are quite right. But no matter what happens there always will be."

Her gaze lost itself among the circling figures beyond the archway, and the truth of the assertion drove itself home with a twinge of something like regret. But when she turned to him again there was unashamed frankness in the clear gray eyes.

"What poor minions the conventions have made us," she said. "Let us be primitive and admit that our acquaintance began last night. Does that help you?"

"It will help me very much, if you will let me try to efface the first impression."

"Does it need effacing?"

"I think it must. I was moody and half desperate."

He stopped, and she knew that he was waiting for some sign of encouragement. She looked away again, meaning not to give it. It is one of the little martyrdoms of sympathetic souls to invite confidences and thereby to suffer vicariously for the misdoings of the erring majority, and her burdens in this wise were many and heavy. Why should she go out of her way to add to them those of this man who ought to be abundantly able to carry his own? Thus the unspoken question, and the answer came close upon the heels of it. But for her own curiosity, – impertinence, she had begun to call it, – the occasion would never have arisen.

"I am listening," she said, giving him his sign.

Being permitted to speak freely, Jeffard found himself suddenly tongue-tied. "I don't know what I ought to say, – if, indeed, I ought to say anything at all," he began. "I think I gave you to understand that the world had been using me rather hardly."

"And if you did?"

A palpitant couple, free of the waltz, came up the stair, and Jeffard rose to make way. When the breathless ones perched themselves on the landing above, he went on, standing on the step below her and leaning against the baluster.

"If I did, it was an implied untruth. It's a trite saying that the world is what we make it, and I am quite sure now that I have been making my part of it since I came to Denver. I'm not going to afflict you with the formula, but I shall feel better for having told you that I have torn it up and thrown it away."

"And you will write out another?"

"Beginning with to-morrow. I leave Denver in the morning."

"You are not going back?" She said it with a little tang of deprecation in the words.

His heart warmed to the small flash of friendly interest, and he smiled and shook his head. "No, that would never do – without the fortune, you know. I'm going to the mountains; with pick and shovel, if need be. I should have started to-night if I hadn't found Mrs. Calmaine's invitation. She has been very good to me in a social way, and I could do no less than come." He said it apologetically, as if the dip into the social pool on the eve of the new setting forth demanded an explanation.

She smiled up at him. "Does it need an apology? Are you sorry you came?"

"Sorry? It's the one wise thing I've done these four months. I shall always be glad – and thankful." It was on his tongue to say more; to dig the pit of confession still deeper, as one who, finding himself at the shrine of compassionate purity, would be assoilzied for all the wrong-doings and follies and stumblings of a misguided past; to say many things for which he had no shadow of warrant, and to which the self-contained young woman on the step before him could make no possible rejoinder; but the upcoming of the man whose name stood next on Connie's card saved him. A moment later he was taking his leave.

"Not going to break away now, are you, Jeffard?" said the fortunate one, helping Connie to rise.

"Yes; I must cut it short. I leave town in the morning. Miss Elliott, will you bid me Godspeed?"

She put her hand in his and said what was meet; and to the man who stood beside her the parting appeared to be neither more nor less than conventionally formal. But when Jeffard was free of the house and swinging along on his way cityward, the spirit of it made itself a name to live; and out of the God-speed and the kindly phrase of leavetaking the new-blown fire of good intention distilled a subtle liqueur of jubilance which sang in his veins like the true wine of rejuvenescence; so nearly may the alchemy of pure womanhood transmute sounding brass, or still baser metal, into the semblance of virgin gold.

So Jeffard went his way reflective, and while he mused the fire burned and he saw himself in his recent stumblings in the valley of dry bones as a thing apart. From the saner point of view it seemed incredible that he could ever have been the thrall of such an ignoble passion as that which had so lately despoiled him and sent him to tramp the streets like a hungry vagrant. As yet the lesson was but a few hours old, but the barrier it had thrown up between the insensate yesterday and the rational to-day seemed safely impassable. In the strength of reinstated reason, confidence returned; and close upon the heels of confidence, temerity. His reverie had led him past the corner where he should have turned westward, and when he took cognizance of his surroundings he was standing opposite the alley-way of the glass-eyed doors. He glanced at his watch. It was midnight. Twenty-four hours before, almost to the minute, he had been dragged irresistibly across the street and up the carpeted stair to the lair of the dementia-demon.

He looked up at the carefully shaded windows, and a sudden desire to prove himself came upon him. Not once since the first hot flashes of the fever had begun to quicken his pulse, had he been able to go and look on and return scathless. But was he not sane now? and was not the barrier well builded? If it were not – if it stood only upon the lack of opportunity —

He crossed the street and threaded the narrow alley, tramping steadily as one who goes into battle, – a battle which may be postponed, but which may by no means be evaded. The swing doors gave back under his hand, and a minute later he stood beside the table with the inlaid cards in its centre, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and his breath coming in sharp little gasps.

It was a perilous moment for any son of Adam who has been once bitten by the dog of avarice gone mad. The run of luck was against the bank, and the piles of counters under the hands of the haggard ones girdling the table grew and multiplied with every turn of the cards. Jeffard's lips began to twitch, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to two scintillant points. Slowly, and by almost imperceptible advances, his right hand crept from its covert, the fingers tightly clenched upon the small roll of bank-notes, – the Providential windfall which must provision any future argosy of endeavor.

The dealer ran the cards with monotonous precision, his hands moving like the pieces of a nicely adjusted mechanism. Jeffard's fingers unclosed and he stood staring down at the money in his palm as if the sight of it fascinated him. Then he turned quickly and tossed it across to the banker. "Reds and whites," he said; and the sound of his own voice jarred upon his nerves like the rasping of files in a saw-pit.

Two hours later, he was again standing on the narrow footway in the alley, with the swing doors winging to rest behind him. Two hours of frenzied excitement in the dubious battle with chance, and the day of penitence and its hopeful promise for the future were as if they had not been. Halfway across the street he turned and flung his clenched fist up at the shaded windows, but his tongue clave to his teeth and the curse turned to a groan with a sob at the end of it. And as he went his way, sodden with weariness, the words of a long-forgotten allegory were ringing knell-like in his ears: —

"When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh in dry places seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty and swept and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first."